The present invention generally relates to a cassette managing system and, more particularly, to a cassette managing system for managing cassettes for recording image information and/or sound information.
In a ordinary cassette managing system for managing an large number of cassette tapes, an individual cassette tape is accommodated in a cassette accommodating case (hereafter referred to as a bin) that stores one unit of cassette tape. When moving cassette tapes from a large number of bins to a recording and reproducing apparatus or returning cassette tapes from the recording and reproducing apparatus to the cassette bins, a robotics unit is used for automating these processes. The robotics unit has a controller and a hard disk that stores managing information about cassette tapes under the control of the cassette managing system, namely, the positions of bins accommodating the cassettes, contents recorded on the cassette tapes, and IDs of the cassette. When a processing request comes, the robotics unit moves cassette tapes based on this managing information.
However, if the power to the system is interrupted or a change occurs in the cassette tape content, the above-mentioned cassette managing system must be initialized. In the initialization, the robotics unit accesses all bins and reads the ID (Identification) data of the cassette tape housed in each bin by a bar code or the like, and matches the read ID data with the data stored on the hard disk. Therefore, the initialization takes time.
For the method of mechanically reading the ID data from cassette tapes, a method of attaching bar codes recording ID data to cassette tapes is conventionally used. However, unless a cassette tape is taken from its bin, the tape data recorded on the bar code cannot be read. This operation of taking the cassette tape from its bin and returning the cassette tape into the bin makes the initialization time still longer.
Further, a bar code can handle only a small amount of data. Therefore, it is substantially impossible to make a bar code record data other than the ID of the cassette tape. This requires storing all managing information of a cassette tape into the hard disk of the robotics unit. A plurality of robotics units may be provided on a single cassette managing system, thereby presenting the problems that a hard disk of a very large storage capacity must be used and the security of the data stored on such a hard disk must be considered.
Since the information (position and so on) associated with the bins is closely related to the information associated with the cassette tapes housed in the bins, a cassette tape taken out of its bin for reproduction or the like must always be returned into its bin. This makes it impracticable to arrange often taken-out cassette tapes together into nearby bins, thereby preventing cassette tape handling from being streamlined.